Go 1.27 reuses HTTP/1 connections even if you don't read the response body

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Go blog has published Better HTTP/1 connection reuse, a short post explaining a Go 1.27 change that looks small but can make many programs noticeably faster without touching a line. It starts with this function:

func getStatus(url string) (int, error) {
	resp, err := http.Get(url)
	if err != nil {
		return 0, err
	}
	defer resp.Body.Close()
	return resp.StatusCode, nil
}

It makes a GET request and returns the status code. That’s all. Called 100 times against index.golang.org over HTTP/1, it takes about 710 ms on Go 1.26 and about 150 ms on Go 1.27. Almost five times faster, with the same code.

Http on Antonio Cortés (DrZippie)

Go 1.27 reuses HTTP/1 connections even if you don't read the response body